


little deaths

by taichara



Category: Saint Seiya
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-06
Updated: 2015-02-06
Packaged: 2018-03-10 19:05:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3300350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taichara/pseuds/taichara
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From a broken shell who has lost everything, a demonic star of Valour is drawn.</p>
            </blockquote>





	little deaths

It is different, this time -- slumped soundlessly at the slender pillar’s snowy plinth, knees cocked up loosely and thin-sleeved arms fallen across them, ragged-haired dark head hung low. Always, always back to the plinth in the square, unnoticed -- or simply unacknowledged -- by businessmen and bodhisattva, beneath the King of Birds soundlessly supplicating Lord Vishnu in his darkened temple. Always waiting, waiting for the shadowed eyes and rough swift hands to lead him away into a paradise of too-brief, pained euphoria.

But not this time. This time, he will not stagger to his feet and follow the procurer.

‘Chasing the dragon’. One surged with the power, the will enough to chase the godlike creature down, wrestle it into submission and steal its strength as a prized pearl -– til the crash brought you spiraling down, down, and desperate to climb back to that heaven again. 

To fly so high even the King of Birds would envy --

Not so very long ago, he had been one of the brilliant young stars of Kathmandu; his domain a heaven of electricity and chrome, an ocean of data-milk churned by asura-programs and god-processes and all answering to his desires. It all answered to his will, this glittering network -- but progress is fickle, as fickle as fate. A single error brought him low, stripped him of pride and position … and now he slumps beneath the Bird King’s lofty pillar, his past a haze, his name eaten by the pleasure-dragon’s jaws.

This time there will be no flight to paradise on thin blue smoke. Chasing the dragon, the beast has wheeled to catch him in claws without mercy, claws that burn with the cold of winter cutting into abused and starving flesh …

_Do you know me?_

The voice -- low, soft as lotus petals, sharp as a kukri, rich as blood -- cuts into the dimming haze; but he cannot lift his head to see who speaks. Cannot find his own voice to answer.

And -- yet --

_How you have fallen._

A faint sound, then, perhaps an acknowledgment. He cannot recall his life, now, and is too far gone to care; this voice is even less.  
Then, time stills.  
In a rustle of shivering chiming pinions, razor-thin, there is a sudden sense of presence -- and then a marble-pale hand as gentle, and pitiless, as steel in velvet grasps him gently by the chin and tilts his limp head back.

He blinks --

And in one unending moment all he can see is brilliant darkness.

The darkness of eternal, night-black adamant, the lifting of many ebon wings and a tempest of midnight hair swaying and coiling in the wind.  
Drawn in, he stares sightlessly at the shining carapace, the shifting wings, as the last shreds of warmth continue to seep away into the snow-dusted stones.

_Look at me._

He head tilts further; and then he sees the eyes. Endless, unfathomable. Midnight and imperious and sapphire and twilight, blood and darkness and the sweet release --

And he knows this judging, eternal gaze, the flawless visage which contains it.  
The faintest of smiles crosses milk-pale lips, as milk-pale fingers stroke along his dusky jaw, his hollow cheek.

_You have come a little too close too soon, this time._

_Come home now, the Game begins; come, Garuda, your brothers await you._

_And so too do I._

No sound of agreement, no whisper, no movement save for dark doe-eyes sliding slowly closed.  
But behind the fluttering lowering lashes now, a shine of ruby, black as blood …

It is finished, he is done. 

And no one sleeps forever now, beneath the Bird King’s pillar.


End file.
